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I know you have one...

It's okay. I won't tell anybody. I'll keep it between us.

But I know it exists.

Your list of ideas.

The ones that died on arrival. Never created. Never born.

Left to oxidize on a sheet of paper or get buried in your notes app.

I know you have one.

Nobody can act on all their ideas, but if you never act:

When do you plan to start?

I've been stuck before. My list was just as long as everybody elses:

Start a youtube channel... Post on social media... Make music... Build an app...

The list went on and on.

But at some point, it got too heavy to hold on to:

And I started.

I waited so long because I felt like my ideas were never good enough

or impactful enough

or big enough.

But once I started building something happened...

My ideas got better

More impactful

and bigger

And most importantly: clearer

Today's newsletter is about your ever growing list of software ideas.

And why you should build every single one.

Here are 3 reasons to start and not wait another day.

Discover more ideas

It might sound counter-intuitive, but your next best idea won't come from a strike of lightning.

Isaac Newton didn't discover gravity because he saw an apple fall.

He asked why the apple fell and took action to answer the question.

You next ideas will come while you're work on projects. New skills will open opportunities for new ideas.

Ideas only exist within the limits of your knowledge.

If the inventor of chicken tenders didn't know chickens and breading existed, how would they have gotten the idea to put breading on chicken?

The same goes for your projects.

Maybe while working on your next project you discover web scraping and the OpenAI API...

Then you have an idea to train an AI model with data scraped from the web!

This is how great ideas happen.

They happen on the way to another solution.

Ideas are chains of necessary action. To have ideas: take action.

There's also something else Isaac Newton createdL

Calculus

He was tired of the limitations of mathematical tools he used during his physics research to formulate a gravitational theory.

He invented calculus because he acted on his ideas.

And by acting, he discovered necessary problems to be solved.

Learn Holistic Skills

Building your own projects end to end is the best way to learn holistic skills.

The normal life of a software project is something like this:

-> ideation

-> design

-> laying foundation

-> building

-> testing

-> setup deployment pipelines

-> deploy -> 👨🏼‍💻

👨🏼‍💻 -> get feedback

-> maintenance

-> deploy... 🔁

For 99% of software work you will do professionally:

You are only in those last three steps.

get feedback... maintenance... deploy... repeat

You lack all the context on ideating, designing, building, deploying, and more.

All the fun stuff.

Building your ideas will make you a better engineer through and through.

And give you way better context for what is going on.

It makes a massive difference.

Build a habit of doing

You might underestimate the power of your subconscious identity.

Are you the type of person who hits snooze?

Are you the type of person who is on time?

Are you the type of person who builds?

These are important questions to ask yourself.

Ignoring how you think prevents you from becoming who you want to be.

The first step to starting new habits it to confront your identity:

Why aren't you building things?

Do you feel like you are the kind of person who just can't get the motivation to build?

Be honest with yourself.

If confronting it is frustrating... You're on to something.

Prove to yourself that you're a person who builds and the brain will do the rest.

Make it as easy as possible.

Set your desk up for the morning.

Leave your laptop open to a project.

Have a timer on your desk that keeps you working.

Whatever you need to do to prove it to yourself.

Build the habit of a person who is a doer.

Once you build your habit of doing, then you can become selective with the ideas you act on, because actions are limited.

But until then: act

Bonus: Confidence (the good kind)

Of course, there are common fears...

• Once your idea is real people can reject it
• It is hard to do and hard things are uncomfortable
• It's scary to confront that you aren't as good as you thought

All of these fade away in the light of confidence and self-belief.

The only way to build confidence is to give your brain hard evidence.

How to talk to girls? Talk to girls and give yourself evidence.

How to get to the gym? Get in the gym and give yourself evidence.

How to build your ideas? Build your ideas and give yourself evidence.

You have to act contrary to who you are now, to become who you are tomorrow.

If you want to build tomorrow? Build today.

Ideas are limitless.

And if you struggle to take action?

It's imperative that you do something—anything.

_______________________________________________

Thank you all for reading this week's newsletter.

I will be switching over to new software for these newsletters soon so if they look a little different in your inbox next week don't worry its still me 🤓

I appreciate all of you.

Until next week 👋